Page Descriptions Options

[seoisgod]

hello,

just want your advice on a quick question if you dont mind.

when it comes to page titles and descriptions I was wondering if there is a right or wrong way?

what I mean is should you do it like this:
** The ones below are based on our competitors home page description and then the second is my own**

Stoves, wood burning stoves, woodburning stove, multifuel stoves UK <------ Page title
Wood burning and multifuel stoves, accessories and spares. <--------------- Page description
www.competitors-address.co.uk

Or is it better to do it like this:

WoodBurning Stoves, Multi Fuel Stoves, Woodburner UK, Wood burning stove UK <--------------- Page Title
XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX is a specialist site offering a wide selection of wood burning stoves & Multi Fuel stoves with upto 25% off SRP.
www.ouraddress.co.uk/

What is the better way if any? The top one is our competitors and they just seem to stuff the page title and description with keywords. The description is not a proper description just keywords where as ours is more of a description.

Does one over the other have any benifits at all?

The way im thinking (which may be wrong) is that because they have just used keywords for the description they would come out better for a search on google as the keyword would be more used??????? for example if some one searches for woodburning stoves then the top example has the word woodburning stoves many times

where as my description has non specific parts in it that wouldnt help in a search for woodburning stoves.

Hope im making sense.

cheers

dean

[Ahmed]

Its just my opinion and it might be wrong but I think you need to make some "branding" effort with your titles and descriptions to entice the searcher into clicking. You obviously want to include your keywords but I think just listing them might not be the best idea. So I would personally go with the second example (the one on your website). Maybe some SEO copywriting will help since you might enjoy the benefits of keyword rich titles/descriptions, higher rankings, and higher conversions -- its magic I tell you.

[Randy]

Of the two possibilities offered, I'd chose #2.

I'm a big believer of getting a call to action into the SERP snippet whenever possible. Mainly because it's something I tested and my CTA version always gets a higher clickthru rate, even if the searching traffic and ranking positions remain unchanged. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)

[seoisgod]

thanks for the replys guys

I do put the name of our company in the page titles but it seems to have been cropped there. I normally do it like this on every title

Woodburning stoves, Multi fuel stoves, Woodburners | My Company Name

etc etc

With regards to descriptions you feel that an informative description rather than specific keywords would be better?

Reason I ask is the competitors site come out #1 & #2 for nearly every single keywork for our industry and have a page rank of 4 (Irrelavant as that may be)

So wondered because the keywork density was high it may be ranking better for it

cheers

dean

[Randy]

Forget keyword density Dean. For the most part it's an albatross. Certainly no more important than the 100+ factors that go into why a page ranks where it ranks.

Do my meta description snippets contain my main keyword phrases? Yes, but only because I want them to show up in the SERP pages when someone searches for those phrases. In other words, I view meta descriptions as a place to include my Marketing message, not a place to stick keyword phrases just for the sake of sticking them somewhere.

[dharrison]

2nd definitely better and more enticing to click than the first one which just looks like a garbled mess.

You can combine a good description and still include your main key phrases.

Reason I ask is the competitors site come out #1 & #2 for nearly every single keywork for our industry and have a page rank of 4 (Irrelavant as that may be)

Ah but if their site is a mass of key phrases and unhuman content, do they get many sales?

[Blogologist]

Randy's point is GOLD!

The description, along with the title -- as they appear in the SERPs -- MAY be as close as an enquirer gets to your product/company...

So it MAY be your one chance to convince them to click on your link, rather than your competitor's.

Therefore, including an offer and/or call-to-action there is so important.

You want to use the same aggressive "conversion maximization" mindset here as you would with adwords text, for what it's worth.

-Alister

[seoisgod]

thanks guys ill stick to the way im doing it now.

with regards to the competitor they do well on sales. yes, the funny thing is their price are rubbish. there is 3,4 even 5 websites that are out there that each product is at least £50 cheaper but because they seem to come out on top at the minute people seem to just go with them.

Think over time they will fizzle out unless they get direct accounts and give better discounts so in the meantime im just trying to get us as far to the top as possible.

[regan4]

Having conversational copy in your description tag with some keywords in it also can give you an advantage of making your listing stand apart from competitors when a person is reading the listings. I think in some ways it can be similar to when you view a bunch of AdWords listings where all the competitors have the same title and very similar copy and then there is a competitor or two that makes the copy sound more personal rather than "canned." Anything you can do with your copy to improve your CTR on your organic listing without sacrificing too much of your ranking/visibility will benefit you.